U.N.: Inspectors Expelled From N. Korea

Published 2:50 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Friday that North Korea has ordered the expulsion of inspectors who have been monitoring the communist country's nuclear facilities.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has received a letter from the North Koreans saying they would no longer allow the international observers access to a nuclear facility.

"We've got a letter from (North Korea) saying take out the inspectors," said an agency spokesman.

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA director, was drafting a response to the letter.

North Korea plans to restart a long-frozen nuclear reactor that experts say can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Ignoring international warnings, it removed IAEA seals and disabled surveillance cameras at the nuclear complex at Yongbyon.

With that equipment gone, the inspectors were the IAEA's last means to monitor activities at the complex. The IAEA normally has two inspectors in North Korea. They are international experts, based in Vienna, and travel to North Korea for stints that last about two weeks. On Friday, the agency had three inspectors in the country.

As of Friday, about 2,000 fresh fuel rods had been moved to a storage facility in the reactor, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said. That was 1,000 more rods than had been moved a day earlier.

The reactor needs 8,000 rods to be started, Fleming said, adding that no work appeared to have been done Friday because of a North Korean holiday.

The IAEA spokesman had no immediate comment on reports that North Korea also told the agency that it plans to restart a nuclear lab where foreign officials say spent fuel rods can be reprocessed to extract weapons-grade plutonium.